


Scarred

by Kats_watermelon



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, merrymemori exchange fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 06:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kats_watermelon/pseuds/Kats_watermelon
Summary: canondivergent memori with lots of stories about scars for @murphystartedthefire on tumblr





	Scarred

“Due north,” Emori whispers. Murphy blinks, looking at her with a mixture of confusion and wonder. She gives him the briefest smile and something in his chest cracks. Her hands are gentle on his face and Murphy almost shuts his eyes to commit to memory this feeling, the feeling of someone touching him softly. Emori leans in again and Murphy thinks for a heart-pounding second that she’s going to kiss him. “I’ll meet you at the island. Don’t trust the flying machines. The woman in red is a killer.” Her hands shift on his face a little. “Good luck, John.”

That’s when she hits him.

* * *

 “Due north,” Murphy says, thinking of the second part of Emori’s instructions. Should he share them? “She said due north.”

He heads off in the right direction and Jaha makes a quip about having faith and Murphy ignores him, the memory of Emori’s hands ghosting over his face. He doesn’t know what she was talking about, but he trusts her. She told him not to trust the flying machines, whatever those are. Maybe airplanes? Maybe helicopters?

He’s still thinking of flying machines from before the apocalypse when they reach the minefield.

He’s wondering about the woman in red when they find the solar panels.

He thinks that the woman in red is not the only killer when Jaha pushes the other man out of the boat.

When they reach the island, he sits down on the beach and waits while Jaha leaves to explore. He flips off a drone that comes by to watch him and it eventually flies away.

“John!” he hears Emori shout. He looks up and sees her and the boat and his face breaks into a smile.

“Who did you steal the boat from?” he calls out. She just laughs and motions for him to get on.  He climbs up the gangplank and stands with his hands shoved in his pockets on the deck. She is grinning at him, coiling a rope.

“I was wondering if you would actually make it,” she says.

“Yeah, a bunch of people blew up,” Murphy says. “Were you going to warn me about the minefield and you didn’t have time or something?”

She just shrugs with that same smile and Murphy wonders if he’s made a mistake in trusting her. Her eyes glint in the light of the searchlight attached to the boat and the something that cracked in Murphy’s chest when she smiled at him in the desert pulses, pushing uncomfortably at his heart.

“I’m glad you survived,” Emori says.

“Yeah, me too.”

* * *

 The shore is green and fresh and Emori tells him that they will go around the Dead Zone instead of through it and Murphy studies the freckles across her nose and the scar under her right eye and wonders how she got it. She and Otan tie the boat up and Otan walks away, tossing something in Trigedaslang over his shoulder that makes Emori stick her tongue out at him. Murphy gets the feeling the Otan doesn’t like him after Otan walks past him without looking at him.

“What did he say?” he asks Emori.

“We’re going to acquire some tech,” she replies, a small smirk firmly in place even as her eyes show another more unreadable emotion.

“I don’t think that’s what he said.”

“It’s not.”

Murphy laughs and the sound surprises even him. Emori smiles for real this time and something new in Murphy cracks.

_Shit._

She shows him the sort of tech that they’re going for and tells him the different ways they get it. He’ll be a big help since he knows much more about technology than she and Otan do. He can go places they can’t – their standing in society forces them to sneak about in the shadows. Murphy prefers to do that, but he can always be more visible if he wants. They don’t get that option.

The first thing Emori does is teach him how to pick pockets. How to slip through crowds of people unnoticed and slide things from their pockets and bags. How to master the sleight of hand that’s required to properly distract a target from their valuables.

“Like this,” Emori says. Murphy’s got a bag slung over his shoulder. He’s the fake target. Emori walks up to him, her left hand behind her back, and gives him a smile that would knock him to his knees if he didn’t know it was fake.

(He is certainly not weak in the knees at the sight. He is not.)

She is saying something while her right hand brushes his arm but all he can think about is the softness of her eyes and the little freckles across her nose and that scar under her eye –

She’s holding the bag that he had across his shoulder and grinning at him.

“Get it?”

_Shit._

“Yeah,” he says, hoping she won’t notice that he wasn’t paying attention. “Yeah, I think I got it.”

* * *

 The three of them construct a small camp in the woods only a mile from the nearest village. Murphy gets his own patch of dirt, a real upgrade from the cage he shared with two others in the Grounder prison camp and definitely an upgrade from being treated like a patch of dirt back at Camp Assholes. Emori sleeps curled on her side a meter away from him, coiled tight as a spring with a knife clutched in her hand. Murphy wonders how many times she’s leapt out of dreams having to wield that knife at someone or something.

He wakes up the first night with a nightmare of red seatbelts and crates and a crowd screaming for him to be floated. He sits up gasping, unable to breathe for a minute. His hands go to his throat and he feels the tiny scar on the very underside of his chin, where the seatbelt cut into his skin.

“John?” Emori’s voice is a mix of sleepiness and alertness that Murphy thinks only she’s able to pull off. She’s sitting up, squinting at him with her knife raised.

“Just a nightmare,” he says, throwing walls up when he realizes how damn weak he seems, whimpering like a child. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

She nods and lays back down, though this time she faces him. He swallows hard and turns so that she’ll be staring at his back.

He wakes up twice the night after that, leaning against a tree and clutching his throat, trying to remember how to pull air into his lungs. The memory of the seatbelts burns against his skin and it feels like the scar is growing larger.

“John,” Emori says softly. Her hand is resting on his elbow. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says. The sun is beginning to rise, bathing them in a dusty gold glow. “It’s just a nightmare.”

“About choking?”

“Not exactly,” he says with a tight smile. “I was hanged.” He tips his head back to show her the scar on the underside of his chin. “I survived.”

“Was it because of the people that you killed?”

Emori’s blunt. Murphy likes it.

“No. I killed them because they hanged me. They hanged me because they thought I killed someone that I didn’t.”

“That’s a little confusing.”

“It was very confusing at the time,” Murphy says, cracking a smile. She’s silent for a moment, then she turns her head to the side to show him a scar on the side of her neck.

“When I was eleven, a man Otan and I used to steal for tried to slit my throat,” she explains. “I survived.”

“What did you do to deserve that?”

“I was born,” Emori says lightly. Murphy nods. She presses a knife into his hand and tells him it will help with the nightmares and they watch the sun break through the trees in silence.

* * *

 She kisses him for the first time after he’s nearly killed by an angry warrior who is not too happy about them stealing tech from a temple in the village. He arrives at the boat breathless from running and laughter, cuts from arrows all over his body. Her eyes widen when she sees him and she kisses him in front of her brother, laughing and saying that she was sure he was going to die.

“I survived,” he laughs. A week later, most of the cuts are beginning to scar. They start the journey back to the island to deliver the tech they’ve stolen to the drones and the woman in red. It’s been almost a month since they were last there and Murphy is curious as to what Jaha’s been up to.

Emori sits down next to him on the deck of the boat and he forgets his curiosity. She runs her fingers along the new scars on his arm.

“Arrows,” she says softly. She lifts her shirt to show him a long, jagged scar on her side. Murphy touches the scar with the tips of his fingers and he feels her barely tremble. “I think I was fourteen when I got that one. We’d just escaped Baylis and were trying to steal from a nearby village. One of the villagers saw my hand and was good with a bow.” She lets her shirt fall over the scar. “I survived.”

Murphy stares at her side, wondering how many more scars cover her body. She’s a beautifully scarred thing. The jagged, raised scar tissue looks like art on her skin. His scars, in comparison, are just red lines and slightly raised scar tissue that slashes across his skin. He is all ugliness while Emori is beauty. 

They reach the island in the middle of the night and dock the boat. Emori says they’ll wait for the flying machines before they do anything more and they settle in for the night, spreading their furs and blankets on the deck of the boat.

“I think this is the most free I’ve ever been,” Murphy says quietly to Emori, staring up at the stars. Otan is snoring somewhere at the front of the boat. “In space, they locked me up. Down here, they didn’t really treat me any better. Out here… nobody’s telling me what I can and can’t do. It’s different. It’s nice.”

“Freedom is a relative concept,” Emori says. She holds up her left hand. “This is a chain for me. For you, this life is free. For me, it’s a prison. When I was younger, I used to dream of being able to have a farm. To live a normal life. That would be freedom.”

“It would be nice to normal,” Murphy agrees. He tries to imagine living on a little farm, raising chickens and growing vegetables and waking up with Emori by his side –

He swallows at the realization that he wants her to come with him.

He rolls onto his side and she nestles into him and the cracked bits in his chest press into his lungs and he breathes in the soft flutter of her heartbeat. He wants to commit this moment to memory, this quiet and still and peaceful shared moment. It could be taken from him at any moment.

It survives to the morning, when Jaha comes to get the tech.

* * *

 “Skaikru joined the coalition,” Emori says, throwing their supplies into a bag. “I heard some of the villagers talking. They’ve been a part of the coalition for almost a month now. It looks like the peace is going to last.”

“Looks like my people have learned how to not be assholes,” Murphy snorts, frowning at the piece of tech that he’s picked up. “Good for them.”

“Azgeda apparently wasn’t thrilled,” Emori continues, taking the tech from him and tossing it in their scrap pile. “Neither were some Skaikru. Rebellions on both sides had to be killed.”

“Yeah, my people are really good at killing things,” Murphy mutters. “What about Jaha and Otan?”

Emori’s eyes grow hard at the mention of her brother.

“I heard that they went to Arkadia,” she says. “And that the City of Light was rejected there. Otan’s dead. Jaha’s in lockup until they figure out how to get the woman in red out of his head.”

Murphy slowly sets down the piece of tech he’s holding and looks at Emori. She is resolutely not looking at him.

“I got this scar,” he starts, pointing to the one on his elbow. “When I was seven.”

She looks up at him, tears pooling in her eyes.

“I was sick,” he says. “I had the flu. My dad went to steal medicine for me. I ran after him and tripped and fell. Slammed my elbow into a sharp corner. My mom patched me up and they executed my dad the next day. I survived.” He rubs the scar. “I always think about them when I see it. My family.”

Emori sobs once, pressing her hand to her mouth. Murphy wraps his arms around her and she sobs into his shoulder.

“He was my family,” she says. “He was my brother.”

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

When her tears dry, they sit on the furs in front of the fire and she shows him a scar on her knee that she got when Otan dared her to jump out of the boat and she hit another boat that was sunken in the shallow water.

“I nearly drowned from shock,” she laughs. “But I survived.”

* * *

 They go to Arkadia almost a year after the sky people join the coalition. The fence is much smaller, the gates are wide open, and there is a small town that is beginning to form around the crashed spaceship. Murphy slips his hand into Emori’s and she takes in everything with wide eyes. There’s an open-air market and tiny restaurants and houses and Murphy thinks that maybe his people aren’t so awful after all. Grounders are mingling with Skaikru. He still keeps a hand on the knife in his pocket.

“Why are we here?” Emori asks him after the third Arkadian sends Murphy an odd look. He sees someone jog towards the enormous crashed Ark, probably to tell a leader that Murphy’s back.

“You’ll see,” he says.

“Murphy?”

“That’s a voice I haven’t heard in a while,” Murphy says, turning to face Bellamy with a smirk. “Did you miss me?”

“Last I heard, you and your unnamed female accomplice were wanted for thievery,” Bellamy says, grinning a little. His eyes shift to Emori. “You must be the partner.”

“This is Emori,” Murphy says. Bellamy waves. “We’re looking for a place to live.”

“A place to live?” Bellamy says, laughing a little. “That’s a little vague. Care to be more specific?”

“I’m skaikru,” Murphy says. “Don’t I get something from you for that?”

“Murphy,” Clarke says, walking up with arms crossed over her chest. Emori shifts from one foot to another next to Murphy. Clarke barely spares her a glance. “Here to steal something?”

“Jesus, is that all you know me for?”

“We’re looking for somewhere to live,” Emori says. Her eyes are darting between Murphy and a Grounder man standing nearby with a hand on his sword. She’s shoved her left hand in her bag.

“Somewhere safe,” Murphy adds. Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up.

“So long as you can earn your keep, you can have somewhere to live,” she says. “Do you want to live in Arkadia proper?”

“No, I actually had something else in mind,” Murphy says. He makes Bellamy lean in and whispers his request so that Emori won’t hear. Bellamy raises his eyebrows but merely says, “We’ve got something on the outskirts that I think would work for you two.”

“Thanks. Just show us the way.”

Emori grabs his hand and they follow Clarke out of Arkadia.

“John, where are we going?” Emori asks.

“Somewhere quiet,” he says, grinning with excitement. “Somewhere safe, and somewhere where we don’t have to steal to survive.”

“No more stealing tech?”

“No more stealing tech,” Murphy confirms.

They walk maybe two miles before Clarke says, “We’re here.”

Emori’s eyes light up when she realizes where they are. The enormous field of empty and ready soil stretches out hundreds of meters and a tiny house sits on the edge, next to a well with a bucket sitting on the edge.

“You two are lucky,” Clarke says. “We’ve been looking for someone to take care of this one. You’ll have to come into town to get seeds and you can sell the crops at the market.”

“Cool, yeah, tell us later,” Murphy says. “Thank you.”

Emori turns to him with the sort of smile that would knock him to the ground.

(His knees are not weak. They are not.)

“Let’s explore,” she says. They figure out how big their fields are (there are three of them) and Emori is delighted to discover a pen full of sheep behind the house. Murphy doesn’t trust the animals, but Emori tells him about a scar on the back of her thigh from the time she and Otan tried to steal a sheep and the shepherd that owned them caught them.

“We killed one,” she explains. “Stole some of the meat that night. They’re delicious.”

They finally turn their attention to the small house. There is a little kitchen with a beat-up wooden table and mismatched chairs. The bedroom has a real bed, big enough for both of them.

“We’ll have to break that in,” Murphy murmurs in Emori’s ear. She grins and pushes him down onto the furs. He tips his head back and she kisses the scar from the seatbelts and he kisses the scar on the side of her neck from Baylis’s knife and when he pulls off her shirt he splays his fingers over the jagged scar on her side from the villager’s arrow. She presses her lips to the scars on his arms and the one on his elbow. He kisses her collarbone, the raised scar there telling the story of her broken childhood of lies and pain and blood. She puts her left hand on the scar on his chest from the jagged piece of metal that she pulled out herself after an angry tech dealer got sick of his sarcasm.

They survived all those scars.

They go to the market the next day for seeds and Murphy cuts his hand on one of the gardening tools that Emori traded some of the last of their stolen tech for. She bandages the cut with a smile and they start planting and watering and building and dreaming and surviving.

That night, Murphy traces the scars crisscrossing Emori’s back and she strokes the scars on his arms.

“Do you think we’ll be safe here?” he asks.

“I hope so,” Emori replies. “It feels like safety.”

“Even if it doesn’t last, we’ll survive,” Murphy says. “It’s what we’re good at.”

“Maybe it’s time to stop surviving,” Emori murmurs.

“And what should we do instead?”

“Live.”


End file.
